It was Colonel Brabazon (now Major-General Sir J. P. Brabazon, C.B., C.V.O.), second in command of the Light Camel Corps, who, when the Column had marched nearly half-way from Abu Klea to Metemmeh, went to his commanding officer, Colonel Stanley Clarke, and suggested that the Column should be immediately diverted to the scene of action. Colonel Brabazon led the Column in the direction of the firing, and his two or three hundred camels made so great a dust that the Arabs thought a whole army was advancing upon their flank, and instantly fled away. The result was that, hidden in the bush, the Light Camel Corps occupied the ground vacated by the enemy, unknown to the convoy, which continued to fire at the place they supposed the Arabs to be. General Brabazon's account of the affair, which he very kindly sent to me, is as follows: "I halted the Column, and the bush being very thick, the trees stopped most of the bullets; nevertheless, they were knocking up the dust at the feet of our camels, and a bullet struck my mess-tin. I ordered our regimental call to be sounded, 'The Camels (Campbells) are coming,' 'Lights Out,' and finally 'Dinners.' But it was not until two or three of us pushed our way through the bush into the open, whence I saw the convoy preparing to give us another volley, that they realised we were friends and not foes, and precious glad they were to see us. They had only a small escort and were of course hampered with the sick and wounded, and I think everyone who was there will agree {322} that they were in a bad way.... I dined at the Guards' mess afterwards, and Douglas Dawson said that he had just given his men the range preparatory to their firing another volley, when he put up his glasses and made out the helmets and red morocco coverings of the camel saddles, and shouted, 'Come down! They are our fellows.' Then, Dawson said, his soldier servant, who was standing behind him, remarked: 'Why, I could have told you they were our fellows ten minutes before!' I suppose he had recognised the 'Dinners' call." So ended a comedy which had come very near to being a tragedy. Gordon's Egyptian soldiers, who were carrying the wounded, put the litters down when the firing began. Among the wounded were poor Sir Herbert Stewart, devotedly nursed by Major Frank Rhodes, Major Poe, Royal Marines, Sub-Lieutenant E. L. Munro and Lieutenant Charles Crutchley. Poe and Crutchley each had a leg amputated. All the wounded were lying helpless on the sand, listening to the firing, and moment by moment expecting the terrible Dervish rush. A violent death was very close to them, when Brabazon and his men came in the nick of time. The convoy had one of the narrowest escapes in the history of the British Army. It remains to add that Colonel Brabazon received no recognition of his action of any kind from the authorities.